"A tour de force: a fictional evocation of the great astronomer which is exciting, beautifully written and astonishingly redolent of the late medieval world." --The Times The classic novel by "Irish master" (New Yorker) and Booker Prize-winner John Banville brings to life the dramatic and surprising world of sixteenth-century astronomer Nicolas Copernicus and the theory that would shatter the medieval view of the universe. Sixteenth-century Europe is teeming with change and controversy: wars are being waged by princes and bishops and the repercussions of Luther are being felt through a convulsing Germany. In a remote corner of Poland, a modest canon is practicing medicine and studying the heavens, preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe. In this astonishing work of historical imagination, John Banville offers a vivid portrait of a man of painful reticence. For, in a world that is equal parts splendor and barbarism, an obscure cleric who seeks "the secret music of the universe" poses a most devastating threat. "[This] unusually fine biographical novel [vivifies] Copernicus, the man who reshaped the medieval world view." --Publishers Weekly "Banville is superb.

There are not many historical novels of which it can be said that they illuminate both the time that forms their subject matter and the time in which they are read: Doctor Copernicus is among the very best of them." --The Economist.